Page 42 of Take Your Breath Away

Hardy shrugged. “I don’t know yet. But I have to check it out.”

“But if … if that’s Brie, then everything you’ve believed about Andrew is wrong. She’s alive, and he had nothing to do with it.”

“The first part might be true. That she’s alive. But I don’t know that that means he had nothing to do with her disappearance. All the more reason for me to talk to him. Why don’t you text him and see when he’s coming back.”

“I did. Just before you got here.”

Hardy shook her head. “You know what? I’ll catch him another time.” She picked up her phone, scrolled through some contacts. “I still have a number in here from six years back, unless he changed that along with his name.” She read it out to Jayne. “Is that still it?”

“Yes.”

The detective pushed back her chair, stood, dropped the phone into the small purse that hung over her shoulder. She pulled a business card from it and placed it on the table.

“If you want to call,” she said.

Jayne glanced at the card but did not pick it up.

“And if you need someplace to go,” Hardy said, “I can help you with that. Someplace for yourself, and for your brother.”

“What are you talking about? Are you talking about a shelter?”

Hardy nodded.

“We don’t need to go to any shelter. I’m not being abused. Tyler’s not being abused.”

“Okay. But there’s my number, should you change your mind.”

Jayne followed Hardy out of the house and watched her get into her car, start it up, and drive off.

She was numb.

So this is what it’s like, she thought, to be in free fall, to be plunging through the air with a parachute that won’t open.

She was about to go back into the house, then decided to wait out here for his return. She sat on the front step, placed her palms on the cool concrete. As soon as he came around the corner in his Explorer, she would see him. And then she had a thought.

Maybe he isn’t coming back.

He knew all about what had happened that morning. The detective had told Jayne that when she went to talk to that Max person, he’d told her his first call had been to Andrew, that he had already been there, listened to Max’s eyewitness account, then seen what was on the next-door neighbor’s security camera.

So much for going to Home Depot for weed and feed.

Jayne wondered if what he’d seen in that surveillance camera image had somehow frightened him. Made him want to run.

She knew the truth, knew about the secrets he had kept from her, and now he was heading for the hills.

She thought of all the stories she’d read over the years of women who’d been duped. Women who had met the man of their dreams, only to learn he was a con artist intent on swindling them out of their fortune. Or a bigamist with another wife, and family, on the other side of the country.

Well, Jayne had no fortune, so there went that motive. And if Andrew had another family somewhere, he certainly hadn’t been spending any time with them.

But was he a murderer?

No, no, not possible.

Then she heard the car. There, coming down the street, was Andrew.

The sight of his SUV prompted both relief and a wave of dread. Relief that he’d not run, and dread over the discussion that lay ahead.

Why had he not told her about Brie? How did you go through something like that and not feel the need to talk about it?